Claude Aiken

For the past two decades, community-based providers – that is, thousands of upstart internet service providers – have crisscrossed America, delivering internet access services with adeptness and skill. Using a potent combination of wireless spectrum and fiber, they deliver fixed connectivity to distant rural and hard to serve urban environments. In short, they’re small innovators and entrepreneurs offering needed choice for communities that have been effectively abandoned by legacy phone and cable providers.

To truly unleash the power of localized broadband deployment, we should ensure all community-based providers have a seat at the table.

In rural America, many grain legs (bucket elevators for moving grain) have small wireless radios attached to them, providing the grain leg’s owner with broadband service.